Category: Ancient Weapons

Trabuco is a kind of attack weapon that dates from the middle age. It was meant to smash the walls of the enemies or shoot projectiles over them. The weapon has its origin in China. During the Crusades time, the Europeans used it as the weapon was efficient and frightening.

Unlike mangonels and catapults, this weapon does not involve any kind of complication in its use. What made it be popular, is the fact that it was easy to manufacture as well as carry out maintenance of the weapon. Additionally, its ability to handle heavy projectiles and launch them over long distances as compared to arms of the same caliber.

The Trabuco works by converting the gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy, but not all the potential drive is changed to potential energy, the other form of the energy is lost to heat and sound energy. The counterweight size determines the projectile distance.

Due to physical calculations of potential difference, Trabuco is used by teachers to explain this physical principle. There existed two types of the Trabuco, namely tensile Trabuco and hybrid Trabuco. Tensile Trabuco, it was operated by a man. The short end was designed to be pulled by people. The largest example of the Trabuco that was ever recorded is the one that was used by Wu Jing Yao de Zong. It was handled by 250 people and was able to hurdle a stone of 140-pound up to 80 meters. The machine was rare due to complicated procedures of controlling large numbers of the people who used to operate it.

Despite the fact that the machine was able to deliver up to four short per minutes, the main challenge was that getting the people to pull the string was a problem, particularly with the same strength at the same time. Due to this characteristic, this kind of Trabuco was utilized only up to the eleventh century.